1)—Fields of the Invention    (a)—Off powerline power supply, operating in series with a high resistance/impedance.    (b)—PLC transmissions at the presence of an undesirable series resistance/impedance.    (c)—Automated homes.
2)—Prior Art
The prior art in the field of automated homes, and in particular “smart-dimmers”, offers one of the following solutions:    (a)—Use dedicated wires for communications and power supplies, and leave the electrical circuit of the dimmer completely independent of communication and power supply concerns. For example, the European InstaBus also known as EIB. A pair of dedicated wires is used for both DC supply and communications.    (b)—PLC based end units, such as X-Ten technology, that requires the insertion of a third wire to the smart dimmer.    (c)—U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,043,635 and 5,701,240 that suggest operating a proprietary power supply, and transmitting trough the serial impedance (lamp). The limitations of said disclosures are:            (i)—The continuous current consumption for the electronic circuitry is limited, and requires long capacitor charging times before a PLC transmission is made possible.        (ii)—illuminated displays and LED indicators are significantly disabled due to the limited current available.        (iii)—Complex scenarios are either slow or impossible, due to said long capacitor re-charge times between the many transmissions associated with said scenarios.        (iv)—Re-transmissions if required, are slow due to the long capacitor recharge times.        (v)—A PLC signal can be severely attenuated since it is transmitted through a serial resistance of a lamp.            (d)—In order to obtain high power supply efficiency for smart dimmers that feed their internal electronics off-line, switching power supplies are traditionally used. Those normally require bulky inductors for both their operation and for filtering.
Hence making their solution less cost effective, more difficult to fit into standard dimmer wall mountings, and more difficult to comply with regulatory standard noise requirements. In addition, for smart dimmers incorporating PLC capabilities, switching power supplies introduce noise into their own PLC receivers and hence compromising their sensitivity and signal to noise ratio (SNR).